Determined DARling

Closing out their 71st Annual Continental Congress in Washington last week, 3,500 delegates of the 187,000-member Daughters of the American Revolution went on record with a roundup of resolutions. The ladies castigated U.S. Latin American policy ("tends to favor state socialism"), urged again that the U.S.

withdraw from the United Nations and that the United Nations remove itself from U.S. premises. They opposed buying United Nations bonds, demanded that the Congress dissolve the new U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

As one of the convention's final acts, the D.A.R. elected as its new president-general a soft-drawling Virginian named Marion Moncure Duncan. At 48, Mrs.

Duncan is one of the youngest women ever to head the venerable organization, and it is her avowed purpose to bring up to date the D.A.R.'s antiquated public image. The mother of three sons, she lives in Alexandria, manages the insurance department of her husband's real estate office. She is acting president of the Order of the First Families of Virginia, a member of the Colonial Dames of America, the Daughters of the Barons of Runnemede, Colonial Daughters of the Seventeenth Century. Daughters of Colonial Wars. Order of the Crown and the Lords of the Maryland Manors.

Despite her links with the dusty past.

Mrs. Duncan has some modern public-relations ideas for the D.A.R. "I hope to get an A for Effort for telling the real D.A.R. story." she says. ''Patriotic, historical and educational--starting with the Daughters themselves and including the general public. We're living in a public-relations age. and people want to know and should know what we are doing." She has no notion of changing the D.A.R.'s strongly conservative outlook. She simply feels that the public ought to know "our real story." She intends to pursue this goal by attracting young members to the D.A.R. (only 9,840 of the members are under 36). "Modern young women want to be wellrounded, whether they're young matrons with children or in business." she says. "I feel they are interested in an upsurge of patriotism, and I think they are part, and should be part, of a well-rounded America. I feel it's time to stand up and be counted before it's too late."

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